Field of Thirteen - Dick Francis [96]
The mediator said, ‘Mr Green offers you five thousand dollars: half of the sum you put up for the bail bond.’
‘Mr Green,’ David Vynn said pleasantly, ‘can multiply that by two. If my client was vengeful, he could multiply by four.’
‘Mr Green spent the bond money paying off debtors who would otherwise have beaten him up.’
‘Let’s all weep,’ David Vynn told her. ‘Mr Green stole Mrs Nutbridge’s pension fund.’
Jules Harlow listened in fascination.
‘Sandy Nutbridge,’ the mediator riposted, ‘is paying to her what she advanced to free him. Mrs Nutbridge’s debts are her son’s affair.’
‘Patrick Green twice betrayed Sandy Nutbridge to the IRS,’ David Vynn drily pointed out. ‘His purpose from the beginning was to steal a fortune in unnecessary legal fees from his so-called friend. Mr Harlow’s ten thousand dollars bond money came along as an unplanned bonus.’
‘Mr Green will repay half of Mr Harlow’s involvement.’
‘No,’ David Vynn said calmly. ‘All of it.’
‘He has no money.’
‘Mr Harlow will wait.’
From old experienced eyes she looked with amusement at bright David T. Vynn; young enough to be her son, too young to feel pity for a crook. She set a future date for a final settlement.
Jules Harlow’s devoted wife decided that as Jules was offering her a new horse for their third wedding anniversary she would go to Ray Wichelsea himself, to the head of the agency, for advice.
Ray Wichelsea, valuing her custom above all others, found her a two-year-old of starry promise for the following year’s Triple Crown.
Mrs Harlow asked if there were any news of Mrs Nutbridge, whom she had immediately liked at the grievance committee meeting. Sandy Nutbridge had eventually saved enough to ask advice from David Vynn, Ray Wichelsea told her, and now Patrick Green had furiously agreed to mediation in her case, too.
Mrs Harlow said to Jules at bedtime, ‘Even if she gets most of her money back, I don’t suppose Mrs Nutbridge will put up bail for anyone ever again.’
Her husband thought of what he’d learned, and of the thousands he had quite gladly paid in attorneys’ fees to defeat Patrick Green. ‘I’m told,’ he said, ‘that there’s a way to bail people out by merely pledging the bail money and paying up in full only if the accused absconds, but it’s expensive. It might be better, might be worse. I’ll have to ask our young marvel, David Vynn.’
They met quietly across yet another boardroom table, paired as before: Patrick Green and Carl Corunna opposite Jules Reginald Harlow and David T. Vynn.
The grandmotherly mediator, dressed in a grey business suit as formal as Jules Harlow’s, as anonymous as the lawyers’, shook hands briefly all round and, sitting at the table’s head, distributed simple documents, asking them all to sign.
Jules Harlow, despite his losses, felt himself strongly filled by a sense of justice. Here they all were, he thought as he signed, fighting a battle to the death with pens, not guns. Patrick Green might rob people, but he didn’t shoot.
Glumly Patrick Green admitted to himself that he’d underestimated both Jules Harlow’s persistence and David Vynn’s skill with the law. The chairman of the grievance committee, furthermore, had uttered fearsome threats: the slightest whisper of misdoing would find the Green licence in the bin. But in time, Patrick Green thought, in time he would rake up another sting; would find another mug…
He irritably signed the paper that committed him to re-paying his debt to Jules Harlow in four chunks of twenty-five hundred bucks each.
The paper was in effect a full confession.
The law turned its back on Patrick Green and put no more work his way.
For a year he laboured in low-paid jobs, resentfully repaying